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I suspect what you are referring to is the final attack when you talk about Basilisk i.e. after it has been immobilised, then the tow has failed it then drifted back to shore and grounded before the final attack and sinking.

From what I have read HMS Keith was initially brought under shore fire and withdrew to safer waters but was attacked from the air. She was at full speed and taking avoiding action when first bombed and sustained a damaged rudder leaving her circling in the water. She was attacked again and...

“This operation [the evacuation of troops] required manoeuvring in a small harbour, with periods stationary while embarking troops.” Thank you, I think you have proved my point, Alison Brooks assertion that the evacuation was primarily conducted by ships going in and out of the harbour is not...

I foolishly made the rookie mistake of just using a single source for French losses rather than checking elsewhere for confirmation. Looking at a copy of Supplement to The London Gazette of Tuesday, the 15th July, 1947 it says the Bourrasque was sunk by bomb. Further investigation shows that...

I’m going to start off this particular thread with a little bit of background and analysis, starting with an extract from ‘Why Sealion is Not an Option for Hitler to Win the War, by Alison Brooks.’ “If we turn our attention to point 3 for a while, the standard response is to say that the...

A good book to gauge the feelings of the general public at the time is "Listening to Britain" which is a compilation of reports gathered by the Ministry of Information by regional inspectors (spies) from formal surveys and informal eavesdropping.

The biggest concern the UK government had apart from an invasion of the mainland was a landing in Ireland... it caused quite some tension between both governments. As far as I can tell from the war cabinet minutes there's no mention of the Isle of Wight.

You wouldn't have needed to, the third regiment was in the final stages of training in May 1940 so by July there would have been at least two full regiments of paras. The training was not just as simple as taking regular troops and teaching them how to jump, they were combat trained to a...

What orders from Goering??? Don't think I've seen those so would be interested to read. Of the 33 Ju87s that attacked the 5500t AA ship (8 x 4" high angle guns, 8 x 2pdr and various MGs) only two were shot down (6% ish, which isn't too bad really considering they were attacking such a...

I think the crew of HMS Foylebank might disagree with you there. Plus a slight error on your part, the attacks on 18th August, the day of heaviest losses in Ju87s were against the airfields at Gosport, Thorney Island, Ford and the radar installation at Poling. Very few German aircraft were...

The equipment was standard issue on all German bombers and transports it used existing navigational aids, it's why the British didn't discover anything out of the ordinary on downed aircraft. As for training, crews needed little or no additional training as it was as simple as keeping the...

Revenge only arrived at Plymouth on 15th September, was involved in Operation Medium in October and then returned to the Clyde in late October before setting sail in November for Canada. Spithead was a temporary stop off point after Operation Medium so Revenge was there in mid October for a day...

Just a quick one, as noted before, Revenge is in Plymouth not Portsmouth so is still free to roam :p

Plus a strong static coastal defence line that Britain lacked and Overlord was the precursor to the liberation of a continent expected to take months unlike Sealion which was the precursor to an invasion expected to penetrate less than 100 miles and take weeks. The scale of preparations and...

Hitler's orders were to investigate and prepare. The impossible bit would have been to order the invasion, something even Hitler declined. The reason: the Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over south east England which in turn would have given them air supremacy over the Channel. And...

To be fair it was an improvised force with a number of troops with zero jump training let alone night jumps and the majority of pilots had not flown combat sorties before. It was bound to be a cluster....

You're possibly reading it wrong, the 990 figure is for all pilots, that's frontline and second echelon pilots. Each group had a squadron of trainee pilots attached, pilots that had passed through the German equivalent of the OTUs but not combat ready. In general they were used on less taxing...

Clutching at straws buster, clutching at straws...

Yep that's the one and if you assume that all 45 aircraft in Norway had operational pilots then that leaves 690 operational pilots in Luftflottes 2 and 3.

Going back to 'Case studies in the achievement of air superiority' it states that in September 1940 there were 990 Bf109 pilots with 735 operational.